


Roy and Adamo's 'Versity 'Ventures

by hydianway



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Emotional Baggage, Fluff and Humour, Hashtag Jokes, M/M, Mention of Royston/Others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 06:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11052921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/pseuds/hydianway
Summary: Hal and Royston have Adamo over for drinks, and Adamo tells Hal about what kinds of trouble they (meaning Royston, mostly) got up to in their 'Versity days.





	Roy and Adamo's 'Versity 'Ventures

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been sitting in my google docs since late 2015 but I dug it up last week and decided to rework and finish it. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thank you very much to Sofie for beta-ing it. <3 Any mistakes or instances of excessive adverbiage that remain are, regretfully, my own.

“The stories I could tell about the things our Roy got up at the ‘Versity,” says Owen, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his legs, taking a long drink from his tumbler of whiskey as he looks into the fire roaring in the hearth.

“Oh, please don’t hold back,” Hal tells him, taking another sip of wine, sitting perched next to Royston on their new sofa. “Royston’s always so tight-lipped about anything he got up to before he was thirty or so.”

“Nooooo,” says Royston, whose voice is a little slurred from all the wine he’d drunk over dinner. “Owen, you can’t betray me like this, please.”

“I probably shouldn’t,” says Owen, stroking his chin in faux contemplation. He grins at Royston. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Hal looks delighted. “Oh, please, do go on,” he says, putting a hand across Royston’s mouth as he starts to voice another protest.

“Well,” says Owen, settling into his chair even further and taking another long drink from his whiskey. “When I first arrived at the ‘Versity, I’d thought whoever was supposed to be sharing my room must’ve already arrived, had a look at the place, and then gotten out of there smartish before I’d even had the chance to turn up. I mean, if I’d been less determined, and less young and foolish, I probably would’ve done the same at about the point of seeing that half-eaten sandwich still on the desk and the two rat corpses under the window.

“The smell alone should’ve been enough to put anyone sensible enough off the place so as to run far, far in the other direction, but I just thanked my lucky stars that my mum had forced me to pack some cleaning things with me and got to work cleaning it all up. Surprisingly hard to find anywhere to put your rubbish in that building, it was, which probably partly explains why it was so disgusting, but I found the bins behind the kitchens across campus somewhere, and I settled my stuff in, and by the time I was in bed the whole campus was partying like it was either their first or their last chance to have fun ever in their lives. "

Owen sighs.

“I didn’t have much time for any of that, even at that age. I was sound asleep for about five solid hours, I think, before this giggling, drunken idiot bursts into my room with the most unnecessarily large suitcase I’ve ever seen, wakes me up, and announces that he’s my roommate for the year, and also that he’s about to fall over.”

At this, Royston goes slightly pink. “And then I did fall on the floor, apparently, and asked Owen to carry me to bed,” he tells Hal.

Hal laughs in delight. “You did not!”

“I did,” says Royston. “I don’t remember it, of course, I was far too drunk, but it does sound rather like something I would do.”

Owen nods, grinning himself. “He also felt up my biceps in the process, and tried to get me to spoon with him, but fell asleep before he could get too insistent, as I recall.”

Royston flushes darker and pours himself a generous measure of wine from the bottle, only spilling a few drops on the coffee table as he does so. Hal quietly takes the bottle and moves it out of his reach as Royston takes a sip, and Owen continues with the story.

“Well, that was really the worst incident from the first couple of months,” he says, looking thoughtful. “Roy came in drunk a few times a week, I had to pick him up off the floor a few more. But the fun really began when he started trying to drag me out with him. There was this one time, the first time, when he got me to come with him to the meeting for the Harmodius Society—”

Hal snickers. “Bet you went down well there,” he says. “You wouldn’t have known what hit you.”

“Exactly,” says Owen. “I’m old enough now that I can handle myself, and no amount of well-dressed strangers fondling my biceps fazes me in the slightest, but if you can imagine: I was eighteen, and Royston here thought it would be a grand idea to take me to a gathering of what appeared to me to be the most pretentious Boys Only Club in the entire world, and for which one of the entrance requirements seemed to be the wearing of a top hat with at minimum one large feather, and preferably a fob watch— or two, in a few cases, which I still think is silly even after twenty-odd years of Roy’s bad influence. It’s not as if you can tell the time on two watches at once, is it?

“But that’s enough of that. Point is, I was wearing the nicest things I own— and, please imagine that Royston actually tried to get me to wear some of his clothes, and actually got to the point of forcing me to try a pair of pinstriped purple trousers on before he realised there was no way I was going to fit into anything the same size as what he’d wear, scrawny bastard that he is— and we walked into one of the function rooms on campus, the nice one with the dark wooden panels and whatnot. Which was full to bursting with men wearing, as I said before, feathers and bright coloured jackets and shiny trousers and everything, so that even Roy looked drab. And he was wearing this ridiculous bright blue get up with an awful shiny top hat to match. The man at the door let me in with a wink and a _completely_ unsubtle once over, and he slipped me a piece of paper with a room number on it, which really should have warned me about the tone the evening was going to take, but I was young and inexperienced and I really had no idea what was going on. I’d barely even been to a party before!

“Anyway, the upshot of it all is that I spent the evening sitting at the corner of the bar watching Royston fling himself at probably the entire eligible male population of the ‘Versity, as well as fending off offers of drinks from all sides as well as a lot of really persistent arm-fondlers, until I finally had to go and rescue Royston from an unpleasant encounter with one gentleman who seemed a bit put out that he was finding some success at putting the moves on his boyfriend.”

“In my defence,” says Royston. “I didn’t realise you’d be such a hit, or that the gentleman in question would be so annoyed when he came back from the loos to find me flirting with his companion. In hindsight, of course, I can’t imagine how I thought either could have gone otherwise.”

“Forward planning was never your strong suit, Roy, don’t even try to pretend.”

“Oh, I never have,” says Royston. “Why would I need to plan ahead, when I have you to do it for me?” he asks, batting his eyelashes at Owen in a way which makes him look quite demented.

“That thought process explains more about you than I ever wanted to know,” says Owen. “And Royston, what use was it to you when I used to tell you things were a bad idea and then you’d go on merrily ahead and do them anyway?”

“I might have listened to you sometimes,” says Royston. Owen and Hal exchange equally doubtful looks. “Well, maybe once.”

“When?” asks Owen. “Before you mellowed out a bit, that is.”

“I didn’t bring anyone home with me after you made some kind of disparaging remark about people who had sex while their roommates were present on the second day,” says Royston. “But that was partly because I had this terrible crush on you for the first few months of ‘Versity and I don’t think I could bring myself to have awkward, drunk sex in the same room as you were in for fear of spoiling my allure for you entirely.”

Hal outright giggles at this— he’s been making steady progress on his own glass of wine, and he’s starting to feel the warmth creep under his skin from it. The room is fuzzier and softer around the edges, and now it’s Owen’s turn to go pink. “So vomiting on the floor of my bedroom was fine as far as your allure went, but actually having sex in front of me wasn’t?”

“Something like that,” says Royston. “I never said it made sense. Anyway, it has been pointed out multiple times in the course of this evening that you had very, very nice muscles back then, much as you do now, so who can blame me when you were so kind on top of it all.”

“Kind?” says Owen, sounding incredulous. “That’s a new one.”

“Well you were,” says Royston. “Do you know how many people who’d just have left me in my own sick for the night, and then made me clean it up in the morning?”

“Unfortunately, I have a fairly good idea,” says Owen. “I was too worried about you choking though, and I couldn’t have slept with the smell.”

“Frankly anyone who didn’t want my awful, drunken, teenage self to die in a puddle of my own vomit is a paragon of kindness, Owen.” Royston looks into his glass, which is woefully empty, and then around for the remainder of the bottle, which Hal has now hidden behind the elaborate candlestick holder. Hal takes the glass out of his hand and puts an arm around his shoulder to console him, then turns back to Owen in rapt attention, silently asking him to continue with the story.

“Right,” says Owen, slowly, and takes a sip from his tumbler. “Roy’s piles and piles of baggage aside, there was also the time he decided he was going to fuck one of our professors, which went about as well as you’d imagine.”

Hal nods and rolls his eyes. Royston nods too, but he looks drunkenly contemplative about it. “Professor Lingual,” he says. “My first heartbreak. Aside from Owen here not fancying me back, of course,” Royston tells Hal. “But as even _I_ knew that one never stood a chance of being requited, I got over it fairly quickly.”

“So, this one started when Royston pranced into my room one day in— oh, this must’ve been our third year. Somehow Royston had conned me into finding a flat with him in second, and instead of running like hell in the other direction we found this absolute hole of a place in Charlotte, a bit too close to the Mollyedge and only just cleaner than the rooms at the ‘Versity. I can’t imagine it’s still standing now. Anyway, we were there for two years, and I was in my room one day trying to get some study done, and Royston pranced into my room to tell me that he had a date with Professor Lingual, and I quote “he’s great with the old, ah, _langue_ , if you catch my drift,” and pranced back out again. I thought he was just mouthing off, because he’d been talking about shagging Lingual since the start of semester and it wasn’t as if he’d never lied about sexual conquests before.”

Royston groans and covers his face. “Just because I told you the whole sordid tale of my tragic adolescent romance with the stableboy back at home doesn’t mean Hal needs to know too,” he says. “And I didn’t really lie, I just stretched the truth a little so that you’d think I was more worldly than I really was.”

“You might not have lied outright, but you definitely led me to believe you had a lot more sexual and romantic experience than a clumsy hand job behind the barn which was never spoken of again,” says Owen.

Royston goes even redder. “Hal, don’t listen to him. He’s a bad, sad man and he lives to make me look stupid in front of people I want to impress.”

“I’m definitely listening,” says Hal, who looks ever more delighted as Owen’s anecdotes unfold. “But don’t worry, you do most of the looking stupid all on your own.”

Owen chuckles. Royston glares at him with as much dignity as he can muster whilst slipping slightly off his chair. Hal rights him, and Owen continues.

“Turns out, he wasn’t mouthing off, which I discovered in the most distressing possible way, when I was at Lingual’s office a few minutes before office hours started and the door wasn’t shut, so I somehow managed to walk in on Royston having his dick sucked on the desk while apparently trying to recite old Ramanthe conjugations out loud. I haven’t been able to look at a verb chart the same way since. Not that I had much patience for them before, obviously.”

At this, the flush on Royston’s face darkens almost to purple, and Hal looks at him in sheer glee. “You didn’t!” he says.

“I absolutely, one hundred percent, categorically did,” Royston says, covering his face again. “It seemed like a much better idea at the time.”

“Obviously!” says Hal. “Do you want me to make you recite Ramanthine verb charts in bed, though? I don’t know if it’d be much help as a study device, but—“

“Absolutely not,” says Royston, looking up at him with the colour draining from his face. “That little fling ended with a very public, very embarrassing breakup, when Linugal stopped talking to me a while later and I confronted him about it on the last day of class. Which, among other things, led to him having to face the ‘Versity ethics board and me having to retake the class, in case he’d been giving me unfairly high marks on the basis of our, ah, relationship. Which was actually an improvement over being expelled, it was only the intervention of one of my lecturers that stopped that from happening.” He sighed, and looked down to examine his hands. “She had a position of some prominence in the city and apparently suggested to the right people that my Talent was far too valuable to lose over something like this, and so I was allowed to stay.”

“I had no idea,” says Hal, looking upset and stroking absently at the hair by Royston’s temples. “That must have been awful.”

“We live and we learn,” says Royston brightly, and spots the wine bottle behind the candlestick holder. He grabs it before Hal can stop him, and pours himself a glass. “I should have listened to Owen when he told me the first time I brought it up that it would only end in tears.”

Owen nodded. “Your tears, of course.”

“Was it ever not my tears?” asks Royston. He takes a long drink, and sighs in satisfaction. “This vintage really is excellent, you know.”

“Once you got pissed off at me and exploded one of the letters I’d got from home,” says Owen. He takes a sip of whiskey and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It might have been by accident but I still cried, and no doubt shattered all your illusions about the stoic, masculine roommate you’d thought you’d ended up with. And there was the other time when you exploded my favourite teakettle, and the other one when you’d just broken up with the bloke after Lingual who was just as much of an arsehole and you were feeling fragile so you decided to take it out on me, and I’m afraid you said some things that were rather cruel, and not less so for being almost true.”

“I’d forgotten all about that,” said Royston. “I was a bastard, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, and you still are. But you’re a good man, Roy,” Owen says, finishing his glass. He can feel his voice getting dangerously wobbly, so he puts the tumbler down and takes a moment to steady himself. “I’m very glad it was my room you stumbled into at Bastion-only-knows what hour, and not some other poor sod’s.”

“So am I,” says Royston. “You’re a good friend, Owen.”

Owen nods, and wipes the moisture from the corners of his eyes, and glares across the table a little as if he’s daring either of them to say anything about it. Bastion, but he really can’t hold his liquor like he used to.

Hal looks between both of them with a strange look on his face. “I’m glad too,” he says. “I know how much you mean to Royston.”

Owen looks at Hal appraisingly. He realises that even up till now there’d been a part of him that was still suspicious. Not that the boy had done anything to warrant it besides love and adore Royston the way Owen has always hoped someone would, behaviour that Owen really wishes past experience had not taught him to be suspicious of. Yet there is something very genuine about Hal, the tips of whose ears are slightly pink from the wine and the heat from the fire, and whose sheepish expression in this moment leaves little room for artifice. And with that, Owen feels the last reserves of his wariness dissolve.

“Good,” he says gruffly, and pours himself another finger of whiskey. “I’m glad Roy found you.”

Hal goes properly pink at that, and Royston coos, then starts snogging him quite thoroughly where he sits.

“Oi, enough of that,” says Owen, but there’s no heat behind it. Roy and Hal don’t even pause, and Owen sighs. He sits and stares into the fire for a few more minutes as he finishes his whiskey. Then, as neither Hal nor Royston seems to show any sign of stopping and Owen doesn’t really judge himself to be in any fit state to walk home, he decides to see himself to the guest room and leave them to it.


End file.
